Do you have great ideas for teaching your child social studies in a fun, hands-on way? See if these options give you any ideas to help social studies ‘stick’ in your child’s mind:Most Social Studies curriculum is text-based. Visually-rich pictorial accounts of events in books can help visual learners process text more effectively.

It is important to use maps as visuals for geography. Showing maps simultaneously, while teaching about countries, helps reinforce locations, geographical features, and important characteristics of each country.

Multi-media presentations provide simultaneous visual and auditory input. There are a large number of history videos available through PBS, like their “Hands-on History” series and other documentary programs.

National Geographic DVDs also cover Ancient Civilizations, Culture & Religion, Exploration, U.S. History, War & Military, and World History. As always, the National Geographic videos provide an exceptionally high quality, visual experience.

Social studies is easy to convert into visual and auditory activities. Hands-on activities can be accomplished through art studies of cultures, going to history museums and historical sites, by creating plays or dramas about historical events, making dioramas, or engaging in reenactments or debates from different countries involved in wars can make learning a realistic experience.

Social studies can be very project based, and learning content from different sides of social issues can help build a solid foundation of understanding. You may want to visit our Social Studies section to learn about curricula that is great for teaching learning abled kids using multisensory teaching.

Science is one of the easiest subjects to teach in a multisensory, hands-on way.

Science by nature is hands-on and visual which makes it easy to teach in a multisensory manner. “A growing body of research evidence suggests free-choice learning contributes greatly to public understanding of science in America” (Kola-Olusanya, 2005).

If your child is provided “multiple ways of achieving the same competencies.. students can choose the one they’re best at” (Dahl, 2005). In other words, if content is provided through multiple representations, and a child is given learning choices, he is likely to focus on the learning representation that is of most benefit to him, thereby increasing the child’s ability to learn.

Science is everywhere in our world and can easily be explored by taking apart a flower, using a field guide to identify as many species as possible, conducting experiments, and talking about experiences related to science. Check out the Science curriculum page and our index of online interactive science sites for more learning options.

For more hands-on visual experiences, you can take your child to museums, nature centers, zoos, aquariums, planetariums, National parks, science centers, etc. You can go exploring almost anywhere with Field Guides or Usborne Spotter’s Guides (links open in a new window), which are visually rich texts.

For additional multisensory science learning, you might consider videos or DVDs. The National Geographic DVDs cover Animals & Wildlife, Exploration, Science, and Nature. Science kits are also a great choice for multisensory learning. Kits usually include hands-on explorations, written materials, and sometimes include multimedia CD-roms or videos.

In the “Resources” section at the end of this tutorial, I’ve included information on where you can acquire good hands-on science materials to help create multisensory learning opportunities.

You can use the visual learning strategies and activities listed below for teaching your child.

The list of visual learning strategies and activities below will provide you with great ideas for teaching your visual learner.

If you’re working through our multisensory lesson tutorial, you will select a Visual learning activity to add to your multisensory plan from the list below. As you recall, in the previous step you selected an auditory learning activity for your multisensory lesson.

Even if you’re not working through the multisensory lesson tutorial, you can use the list select activities specifically for your visual learner.

If your child is not a visual learner, she will still benefit from instruction that includes input from each learning modality–as we’ve learned about in this multisensory teaching tutorial.

Thinking about the specific lesson you are designing this multisensory lesson for, write down one of the visual learning strategies or activities listed below. You can also come up with your own ideas.

Add the visual learning strategies or activities you’ve selected to your previously selected auditory learning activity. You will add a kinesthetic learning activity and an activity for the tactile learning style as you visit the next two pages. Adding an activity from each learning style helps build a multisensory lesson plan for your child’s optimal learning.

Also, I want to add visual learning strategies using educational posters is a great way to provide picture-based learning. Whether you use maps, math charts, posters of various species of animals, flowers, rocks, etc., a visual learner will appreciate any visual content you can provide. If you have a highly visual learner, seeing concepts, categories, or detailed identification information on a colorful wall poster can have a huge impact on learning.

In order to make it easier for you to find such teaching tools, I have created automatic search bar at the bottom of this page. For each school year, depending upon what you are studying in each subject area, getting a poster or two is a great plan. The bar at the bottom of this page has a sampling of educational posters. Feel free to click on the posters’ search to see a much wider selection.

As mentioned on the prior page, multisensory instruction is at the heart of Orton-Gillingham reading programs designed to overcome dyslexia. In addition to reading programs for dyslexia, multisensory instruction helps reinforce learning for virtually every learner.

If your child is one of the Auditory Learners …

Have you figured out the best teaching activities to use when teaching your child?

You can build multisensory lessons for auditory Learners. You can meet the specific needs of your own child too. All you have to do is select auditory learning activities to teach anything your child is going to learn.

The GREAT NEWS for you is that MOST curriculum is geared towards auditory learners. Auditory learners learn best through words. That means reading, explaining, and listening to anything auditory are good teaching activities to use.

It’s rare that a child with a true auditory learning style has difficulty learning through typical school books. If your child is an auditory learner and struggles with learning from books, it’s probably due to a cognitive issue. Problems like working memory, processing speed, attention and focus can affect learning. If that’s the case, you can improve learning by using a cognitive enhancement program.

When you’re planning or starting a new lesson, write down one of the ideas listed below for teaching auditory Learners. You can also come up with your own ideas for teaching auditory learners. Using singing, audio books, and rhymes are some of the most fun learning activities.

After you’ve chosen an auditory learning activity, go to the next page to chose a visual learning activity. That is, you can move forward if you want to build a multisensory lesson for your child.

By choosing learning activities from each of the learning style options, you will be creating a multisensory instruction lesson plan. Multisensory teaching is the most effective way to reach most learners, including auditory learners.

Let me say also, Multisensory Instruction is the instructional method that is at the heart of Orton-Gillingham reading programs designed to overcome dyslexia. Thus, if your child has dyslexia and requires an Orton-Gillingham reading program, it is critical that you understand multisensory lesson planning.

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This website is authored by Sandra Cook, who holds a Master's Degree in Instructional Design and Technology. The information provided within is educational in nature and designed to help you provide the best education possible for your child. If you need legal, psychological, or medical advice, please consult with a licensed lawyer, psychologist, or medical doctor. See the "Disclaimer, Terms of Use, and Legal Notification" link to the right of this notice for further information.